Sunday, 22 February 2009

Thanks to everyone who sent in photos for this year's Little Cat Diaries Toughest Cat competition (over 500 in total), and commiserations to those who missed out (although slightly less heartfelt commiserations to those who thought, through good shutter timing, they could pass a gentle yawn as an example of growling terror). A contest like this is always going to be tough to judge, but during last year's event there was at least a clear winner. This time it was much more closely run. I've even decided to give an extra prize, partly to acknowledge just how evenly matched the winners are (to narrow them down to four has been hard, but to narrow that four down to three would have been impossible). To be perfectly honest, on a different day, in slightly different moods, The Bear and I might have given any one of them first prize, but a decision had to be made, and we will just have to deal with the poison paw letters that inevitably result from it.

In first place, and winning a pen-and-paw-signed copy of the paperback of Under The Paw, a signed copy of Dewey by Vicki Myron, and a signed copy of Vicky Halls' The Complete Cat: Greebo, from Kate Viscardi. What's noticeable about Greebo is his effortless aura of malevolence, combined with the very definite sense that he is coiled for action. Unlike so many cats submitted, he's not trying to impress us. There are no props (although he does bear a certain resemblance to Prop Joe from the TV show The Wire). He's not growling or raising a paw. Yet there's something genuinely, awesomely immovable about him. I've spent a long time pondering what he's staring at in this picture. It could be a human, a rival cat, or a leaf. Whatever the case, you can be sure it's shortly going to Get It in a fairly major way.

Of his victory, Greebo says: "I worked so hard for this. Being small I had to work out twice as much to keep these muscles in trim. Look at them: rock hard! I'm small but tough. I was born under an outdoor aviary and grew up knowing it was my responsibility to kill rats and protect my family. I want to thank my adoptive mum, who was a collie-cross and put up with being attacked and walking round with me hanging off her tail. Jess, I still miss you!!"

In second place, and winning a pen-and-paw-signed copy of the paperback of Under The Paw: Cuba, from Naomi Kenton. Cuba, your narrowed eyes make me feel sure I have wronged you in some unforgivable way, you clearly have a large fanclub of terrified minions, and that fang really adds a finishing touch to your American Gangster aura of ice cold intimidation. Please rest assured that your failure to take first place has nothing to do with the other photo submitted by your human, where she had dressed you up in a camp little witch's hat.

In third place, and winning a pen-and-paw-signed copy of the paperback of Under The Paw: Scratch, from Hayley Hart. I have no idea what Scratch is attacking in this photo, but that probably doesn't matter, since it has clearly been torn limb from limb, and retains only the faintest resemblance to its original form. If this were a Most Psychotic Cats contest, Scratch would have taken first place (with birdman Luke - see posting below - a close second).

In fourth place, and winning a pen-signed and paw-signed copy of the paperback of Under The Paw: Furball, from Lindsey Jackson-Kay. I've tried not to be swayed be extraneous details about these hardest of cats. If someone has included a passage with their photo claiming that their cat once decked a squirrel with one paw behind their back, I have done my best to ignore it, and focus purely on the image in hand. That said, I'm not sure I can entirely claim that my decision to award an extra prize for Furball hasn't been influenced by hearing about her hardscrabble beginnings and her rehoming via Facebook. Furball is clearly a star of brilliant, unrivalled grumpiness, and I can only dream that one day I have a cat like this working as my house's own resident Greeter.

Sunday, 15 February 2009

Furball From Lindsey:Sox From Suzanne:Scratch From Hayley:Luke From Adrienne:Lucas From Lene:Grimalkin From Emily:Greebo From Kate:Gao from Marina:Frosty From Barbara:Fluffy From Helge:Cuba From Naomi:Buster From Stephanie:Boots From Nanci:Scratchy from Mandy:Tucker from Linda:Cuddles from JennyMax from Jenny:

Tuesday, 10 February 2009

FruzzMany cat owners spend literally hours puzzling how, in the course of one small tussle with a fellow member of its species or an energetic cleaning session, a feline can shed what appears to be its entire body weight in fur yet appear more or less physically unchanged. The answer lies with fruzz: a miraculous expanding substance often mistaken for “fluff” and the other less intriguing, hair-related waste produced by more pedestrian animals. Fruzz cannot be truly categorised as Fruzz until it has left the surface of the cat in question, at which point it immediately begins to grow at a rate both violent and imperceptible. This means it is incredibly hard to describe to those who’ve never come into direct contact with it. You can instruct them to picture a protein filament version of a just-add-water instant pudding, but even then you’re only scratching the surface of its true nature. Fruzz is far from the most unpleasant kind of cat filth, and environmental scientists believe it has hitherto untapped potential for recycling*, but complacency about its existence remains one of the most frequent reasons that moggy slaves tend to underestimate when budgeting for electronic cleaning devices. It is also one of the major unacknowledged elements that separate cat owners from normal civilians in embarrassing ways in the outside world. This is evinced by conversations such as the following: Cat owner (fondling Miele Aquarius S5580): “So, how does this baby perform when it comes to fruzz?” Vacuum cleaner salesman: “Mr Babbidge, can you call security, please!? I think we’ve got one of those people from the special hospital in the shop again!”

CrunkA dangerously adhesive, bitty, saliva-like substance not dissimilar to regurgitated digestive biscuits. Manufactured in an alarmingly large range of colours including Devil’s Night Black, Off Grey and – most popular of all - Carrot Vomit Orange, crunk is most often found on cats’ chins and surrounding areas. Much murky confusion surrounds this enigmatic cat detritus, especially in the case of those unfortunate souls who have been known to mistake it for the energy drink of the same name pioneered by the Atlanta-based rapper Lil John. The first genuinely disturbing crunk moment often comes when, having assumed that what you’re dealing with is mere spit, the realisation dawns that it is, in fact, crunk, and any resemblance between the colour of it and your cat’s fur is mere coincidence. The second comes about two minutes later, when having turned your back on said feline for a matter of seconds whilst searching for some kitchen roll, you realise that the crunk has vanished. In one way, this is good news. Any cat without crunk on its chin is a more pleasant cat to be around! In another way, it is the worst news possible: you can bet your bottom dollar that that crunk didn’t just disappear into thin air, and its final destination will be a mystery guaranteed to haunt your very soul into the midnight hour and beyond.

Mair While the phrase “I’ve had a ‘mare” does not signify anything pleasant when uttered by a normal citizen, the phrase always gives rise to an extra shiver among cat owners. Nightmares are one thing, but walking into a kitchen in the stark light of day and finding beloved woks, floors, bowls – woks, floors and bowls that you’d scrubbed to within an inch of your life – flecked liberally with mair is another entirely. Those who’ve accidentally rested their hand on a shagpile rug or a passing donkey after using Pritt-Stick will have a generalised idea about mair’s fuzzy, sticky horror. But least with pritt stick and a donkey, you know what you’re dealing with. With mair, you’re always on your toes (although thankfully not literally, since that would truly be a sod to remove). “Is the sticky bit in the middle regurgitated wet cat food, or some of last night’s sticky toffee pudding that Janet accidentally got caught in his tail whilst illegally roaming the kitchen counter?” I might ask myself, as I examine some mair. And while you tend to assume that the hairy coating on the outside of the mair in question comes from one of the cats themselves, who’s to say it isn’t actually the product of a vole they killed last night, or a combination of both? A particular liability to habitual finger-lickers, mair can, with a little effort, usually be removed from skin – one of the stronger types of handwash associated the medical profession will normally do the trick. The problem is as much one of “When?” as it is one of “How?”. Do you clean your hands now, or when you’ve finished sitting on the kitchen floor, crying, and fantasising about a world where there isn’t always at least five cat dishes stained with gribbly bits in your immediate eyeline? Do you do it before you’ve started drying that painstakingly demaired bowl, with that tea towel that might have more mair on it, or afterwards? And even when that’s done, there are the fixed objects around you to think about. Those surfaces might look clean from a distance, but look again. It is a rare occasion, worth celebrating, when a cat owner’s kitchen doesn’t showcase at least one cupboard with a strip of mair stuck to it.

Spottle“Like Wee, But Even More Long-Lasting And Orange!” might not seem like the most irresistible marketing slogan to most of us, but those who use spottle to disorientate and subjugate their minions will no doubt disagree. Unlike a cat that has flagrantly and expansively urinated on, say, a curtain or a particularly irritating section of skirting board, the spottling cat cannot be so easily singled out as an offender. This is not to say his aim is any less deadly. Quite the contrary: spottling is such a fine art, it has even led some humans to speculate whether their cats have tiny little paint brushes secreted beneath their tails. “Did that cat just spottle?” you will often find yourself asking, as the culprit gently shimmies backwards into a corner of the living room. “Or is he just unusually fond of our new lava lamp?” Since it can take up to five hours for spottle’s virulent, mocking hues to fully materialise, laying blame is rendered harder still. By the time you’ve concluded that, yes, your cat did spottle on the cover of Richard Russo’s Pulitzer prize-winning 2001 novel, Empire Falls, the culprit is long gone, lazing happily somewhere beneath a fig tree in the garden or spottling on the freshly unwrapped packaging of nextdoor’s new petrol-powered strimmer. Some spottle, in fact, remains invisible forever, and in such cases the only way to detect it is to insert another cat nose first into the suspected area. If the cat looks up from the spot in question with its mouth half-open and a slightly deranged expression on its face, not unlike that of Anthony Hopkins when he smells something that awakes a bad part of him in Silence Of The Lambs, you know that you’re dealing with spottle. Hence the well-known phrase: “Is that some spottle that cat has just sniffed, or is it just not remotely pleased to see me?”.

* See the ever-popular “Fruzz Bird” – for which you will need the following ingredients:1. A rubber-dimpled pet mitt.2. A cat.3. A light breeze.4. An open first storey – or higher - window.5. Some fruzz.

Saturday, 7 February 2009

Longer term readers of this blog will probably remember the Toughest Cat competition, Little Cat Diaries' most popular photo event of last summer. Some of you might even have made it onto the shortlist. All in all, the competition generated around 800 entries, and the winner, Rufus Bugcat (see above), was a moggy of phenomenal, unrivalled hardness. To mark the upcoming paperback publication of Under The Paw: Confessions Of A Cat Man I have decided to revive the competition - in fact, I might well make it an annual event. Entry is simple: either post your photo (you can send more than one if you like, but no more than three) on the event board on Facebook - and do remember to join the Under The Paw group there as well - or send it to underthepaw@tom-cox.com. Please feel free to invite your friends too. Previous entrants are not allowed to resubmit photos, UNLESS your cat has been working out since then and you have new photos which you genuinely believe show just how much tougher he or she has got in the interim.

This is a real challenge, since it's hard to imagine any cat outharding Rufus, but I'm really looking forward to assessing the contenders. The Bear, naturally, will have final vote. The top three entries will win copies of the paperback, signed by both me and - presuming nobody minds a mudstain in their book - The Bear, and the outright winner will receive some additional cat goodies. Those who'd like to peruse last year's longlist can do so by scrolling back to last June and July's littlecatdiaries posts.

This story, about the tabby that survived a forty mile trip crouched between the air brake and axle of a lorry, is somewhat more impressive than the one I sometimes tell about the time that my mum and dad's friends Pete and Jean drove fifteen miles down the M1 with a loaf of bread on the roof of their Ford Escort estate. If anyone lives in Essex and thinks they know where the cat came from, please call the RSPCA on 0300 1234999.

Favourite habits?GETTING LOCKED IN THE GARAGE; DESTROYING BOX FILES; SETTING UPON MY (TINY) SISTER UNTIL SHE BATS ME ROUND THE HEAD AND I GO OFF AND SULK; STARING AT PLACES WHERE A MOUSE ONCE HID IN CASE THAT IS HOW THEY ARE GENERATED.

What constitutes a perfect evening for you?DINNER, FOLLOWED BY A STROLL IN THE GARDEN AND THEN OUT- OR INDOOR PLAY WITH THE HUMANS. THE STICK-AND-STRING TOY SEEMS TO BE A FAVOURITE. I WILL THEN LIE ON THE CARPET IN THE STANCE KNOW AS ‘BEACHED MAMMAL; MISCELLANEOUS’. IF THE FEMALE HUMAN PLAYS THE PIANO I WILL GET ON THE KEYBOARD AND EITHER PERFORM THE JAZZ CAT STOMP, OR FORCE A RENDITION OF ‘BOOGIE WOOGIE FOR LEFT HAND AND OBSTRUCTIVE MOGGIE’. IF I’M ALLOWED ON THE BED OVERNIGHT I WILL BRING MY DAY TO A PERFECT END WITH A 3AM SESSION OF FRENZIED PURRING, WHILE DOING A KIND OF MORRIS DANCE ON THE HUMANS’ CHESTS.

Favourite foods?I NORMALLY DINE ON CAREFFULLY RATIONED DRIED FOOD, BUT I FAVOUR AN OCCASIONAL TIN OF TUNA-AND-PRAWN IMPERIALE AS BOTH SNACK AND FLOOR-DECORATING MEDIUM. I WOULD ALSO EAT PEANUTS AND TWIGLETS IF I COULD GET MY PAWS ON THEM (WHICH I CAN’T).

Defining moment of your life?REALISING THAT GRAVITY IS NOT MY FRIEND IN THE TREE-CLIMBING STAKES. I TEND TO RUN FULL-PELT AT THE TREE, LAND A FOOT OR SO UP THE TRUNK, DIG CLAWS IN MADLY AND THEN FALL OFF BACKWARDS. I AM OTHERWISE VERY AGILE AND SPEEDY – YOU SHOULD SEE ME WITH THE DENTED PING-PONG BALL. OH YES.

Any enemies (including people, animals and objects)?TIN FOIL; THE BIN MEN; AN IMOGEN HEAP SONG THAT FRIGHTENED ME SO MUCH THE FEMALE HUMAN HAS NEVER PLAYED IT AGAIN.

If you could do one thing to make the world a better place for felines, what would it be?OBLIGE ALL CHEEKY PIGEONS WHO OFFER DERISION TO ASCENT-CHALLENGED CATS TO HAVE THEIR WINGS CLIPPED. THEN WE’LL SEE.

If you could meet one celebrity, who would it be and why?TOM BAKER BECAUSE HE LOOKS THE SORT THAT MIGHT HAVE CAT TREATS SOMEWHERE ON HIS PERSON.

Which One Of The Cats In Under The Paw would you most like to be stuck in a tiny feline lift with?THE BEAR BECAUSE HE’S A CLAN CHIEF LIKE ME (THE MCDONALD; THE BEAR; THE PIE), AND RALPH BECAUSE US SPECTACULARLY HANDSOME TABBIES SHOULD STICK TOGETHER.

Following on from Tuesday's post about Bootsy's delusions of snoozy grandeur, Daniel, the owner of the increasingly legendary Samson, has sent me a link to some pics of his cats in an array of unusual sleeping positions. He assures me that Pepper, the tortie pictured above, merely fell asleep on the arrow, and was not, as it might first appear, shot out of the sky whilst soaring over her native Great Yarmouth.

In general I prefer something a bit less soft around the edges than the cat photos of Jane Burton - even the hedgehog featured in one of her pics looks a bit like it's been tumble-dried and talcum-powdered beforehand - but her shots definitely have character. Her book, A Cat's Life, has just been posthumously published and the Daily Telegraph recently featured some samples.